Tuesday, 2 July 2013

The Weatherman Says...

Want to start this off with a huge thank you to everyone for the incredible response to our first full trailer for William's Lullaby. We are thrilled with the initial reaction and it has made us even more excited to pull the curtain back on our five-year work-in-progress. For those of you who have not yet seen the trailer, take a look at the link on the bottom of this post. We encourage everyone to continue to share via social media, show your friends, spread the word -- if you want to eventually see the film, word of mouth is truly the best way to make that happen! If you liked what you saw, we encourage you to give it a thumbs up, comment on Youtube, Vimeo, Facebook, Twitter -- we genuinely want to hear from you!

What to say about the trailer? It is a lot more revealing than the initial teaser released in January, I'll say that much. However, there is still quite a bit we're not showing you and a bit of clever editing to divert your expectations. Don't read too much into it just yet. But know that every single shot in the trailer is chosen for a reason and we are definitely giving you more pieces of the puzzle to keep you guessing until you see the film.

Quite a bit of response for the trailer was geared towards the song we used, which also happens to be featured in the film itself, "The Weatherman (Pt. 2)" by Canadian rock band, Alert The Medic. I had first heard this song when driving home from the set of William's Lullaby in August, 2011. Mike Whissell, who was doing some location sound with Stephen Lee at the time, was with me and played me the tune from his iPod, saying he couldn't stop thinking about William's Lullaby when he heard it. Specifically the lyrics: "It's a long way down ... It ain't easy..." seemed to line up nicely with the overall mood of the film. We would go on to listen to the song frequently over the remaining shooting days, travelling to and from set and it quickly rose to the top of my playlist, becoming a bit of a motivator as we pushed through production. It became an even bigger motivator in the editing room and served as a sort of theme song for William's Lullaby and the story of Thomas Splinter's inner-demons.

I find it interesting that the original music video for the song takes on a very powerful interpretation of the lyrics (especially in today's day and age) - that's quite different from how it is used in Lullaby. Anyone in the armed forces or with relatives in the armed forces can certainly feel the power from these images. See the Official Music Video from Alert The Medic here:

However you choose to interpret the lyrics, there is no denying their power and that is the sign of a hit song. I am honoured to feature this tune in William's Lullaby and to include Alert The Medic as part of our team. The song is a powerful fit to the emotionally-charged images and performances in our film and using it in our first full trailer seemed like a very appropriate way to introduce you to our cast, the band and their song.